


Eric at Work: Running Down the Clock

by cathouse_mary



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Mild Gore, Reapers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathouse_mary/pseuds/cathouse_mary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eric has a situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eric at Work: Running Down the Clock

The last collection of the night turned out to be waiting for him. The place was a sanitarium, Brompton Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest.

Ellen Collins, age seventeen, of tuberculosis.

“I’ve been waiting. It’s about time one of you fellows showed up for me.”

His appointment was sitting up in bed, awake and aware in a flannel nightgown and with wisps of blonde hair escaping her flowered mob-cap. It always gave Eric a start to be seen, and he looked her over cautiously.

“Well, there are rules, you know.” The young woman was as pale and pretty as a marble bust, but under the Shadow of Death. “Do you know what I am?”

“You’re one of the death-clerks.” She struggled to move the bed tray that seemed to be there to keep her in place. “I’ve seen the clerks going about the rooftops for a while now. One of you came for my friend Sally not so long ago. He went into her room, and when he came out she was gone.”

“Well, it’s about that simple.” It made Eric nervous to be too close to humans, but he helped her move the bed tray she was struggling with. “Death-clerk is fairly accurate.”

Miss Collins took a set of papers tied with a green ribbon out from under her pillow and set them on the nightstand. “There. I want those to be found right away. I’ve little enough to bequeath, but the staff here has been very kind for the most part. Can we get on with it?”

Eric blinked and sat on the edge of the bed. “You want to die? Don’t misunderstand me, Miss Collins, but usually it’s quite the opposite!”

“Mr… I’m sorry, but we’ve not been properly introduced?”

“Ah. Eric Slingby, of the Grim Reaper Dispatch Society - Senior rank.” Not, however, senior enough to have ever encountered a situation like this.

“Ellen Collins, without much done to speak of. How do you do, Mr. Slingby?” She cocked her head, smiling. “If I may be bold, you do not look very grim at all. Do you normally go about your rounds unseen?”

“I like bold lasses, truly!” The flirt slipped out before he could stop it, but it made the girl smile. “The more a human is aware of us the more they become able to see us. Acclimated, you know? You must have been aware of us for a good while.”

Miss Collins’ smile faded. “I’ve been here since I was eight.”

The hospital was a regular stop on each Reaper’s route, which meant that she’d seen an incalculable number of deaths. Nine years was more than half of her short life.

“My friends died, and I tried not to make any new ones because I knew they could die, and that I might die and leave them grieving.” She looked down at her hands, the skin almost translucent enough to see her veins though. “My family stopped coming some time ago, though Father provides the money to keep me here. There are no longer letters, or photographs, though there’s a gift each Christmas that might as well be for a stranger.” A tear splashed on join of thumb and palm. “The past three years running, they’ve gotten my birthday wrong.”

Crap. They should have sent Alan on this one. Alan was good with this kind of stuff. Eric rummaged out his handkerchief and pressed it into her hands. What kind of a place didn’t even leave a poor lass a hanky?

“I can’t even get enough breath to walk down the corridor any longer, and it h-hurts and I want it to stop…”

“It’s going to be all right. Just… just trust me on this.” And why the hell couldn’t the staff dust in here? It was making his eyes itch. “It really will be.”

“Oh, please don’t hand me that blather about a loving god and an eternity in a heaven singing praises to the one who did this to me…” Ellen was sobbing, wringing the handkerchief between her fists. “I can’t bear it. I just can’t!”

Fuck! Oh, Alan would handle this way better. Eric put a tentative hand on her shoulder, then froze as the lass leaned into him and buried her face against his chest. Fuck. Bugger. Fuck. Help.

“Right. Listen. I’m not supposed to let on, all right? God doesn’t do this. I swear on my scythe and book.” He put an arm around her, patting her back. “Sickness happens. Death happens. Humans do horrible things to each other. Good people have bad things happen to them. Utter bastards get posh lives. Just because they stick the name of a Deity on there doesn’t mean that it’s Their Will. I could stick label that says ‘strawberry jam’ on a jar of shit, and that doesn’t make it into strawberry jam.”

Somehow Eric didn’t think one was supposed to say that to a proper young lady, but she listened, sniffling.

“So here’s what I do. When you’re good to go, I take these-” He wasn’t going to show her the scythe, pulling out the scissors instead. “And just give a snip to free your soul and its record. Then I have a look at your record, confirm or alter the judgement, and see your soul and record to their proper place.”

“What happens to my soul?”

“Well, souls typically need a good rest. So they go off for a bit, and then when they’re rested and healed up, they can come back.” Something itched at the back of his mind, almost a memory. “Either as humans or… sometimes… as one of us.”

“As a Grim Reaper?”

Eric settled Ellen a bit more comfortably against his shoulder. “A soul that wants to be reborn goes into the waters of the Lethe, washing away all memory of who they were before.” The tale was old enough that he could say it in his sleep. “They travel down the Lethe to where it feeds into the Sea of Souls, and when it’s time, the soul gets a new body and a new lifetime to record.”

“But what’s the point? Life after life, never remembering the other?” The handkerchief was put to good use. “It seems a waste of a life just to forget it all, good and bad alike.”

“Well, if you had a new life, would you want to remember this one? Or if you had a really good life, you might try to recreate it and never learn or do anything new.” There were some more pragmatic reasons, as well. “Besides, how would you fit a lifetime into a baby’s skull? There’s no room, and the brain has to grow.”

She was calming, then pulling back and coughing into his handkerchief, her teary eyes apologetic and mortified above the bright red blood soaking the linen.  
Without thought, Eric reached out and stroked her hair. “When you’re ready.”

The coughing slowed, and she all but collapsed on her pillows - exhausted and laboring for each breath. “It’s not that easy. A part of me still wants to live, though the rest of me knows it’s not going to happen. And I don’t… I don’t want to be afraid at the end, or go like some of my friends have.”

Eric made a show of checking the book. “Well, you’ve got some time, so rest up a bit. I’ve got nowhere else to be.”

“Could I have some water?” Her voice was very faint.

He held the cup so that Ellen could drink, covered her with the blanket she asked for when she was cold. The Shadow of Death was palpable as she closed her eyes and slept.

The clock chimed once. Twice. Thrice.

Ellen Collins’ record burst free before the fourth chime of the hour. It was too short to render any judgement at all, and Eric wrote only one additional comment in the book before collecting her. It was a minor alteration, but he thought Ellen might approve.

~

It was some years later that there was a new lass in the glasses department, and Eric went by to see. The wee blonde thing was listening seriously to Father, who spotted Eric and glared him to the door and about his business.

Helen Collier glanced at him, returning his smile and wave uncertainly. “Have we met?”

Eric only smiled and saluted on his way out. “Not in this lifetime.”

~ End


End file.
